Yerkes National Primate Research Center
Stuart Zola, PhD, Director
One of eight national primate research centers funded by the NIH, Yerkes National Primate Research Center provides leadership, training, and resources to foster scientific creativity, collaboration, and discoveries
Supported by $48.3 million in funding, Yerkes' research program includes 141 research awards. Studies involve 3,400 nonhuman primates. Approximately 1,300 of the animals are at the main center on the Emory campus, and another 2,100 are at a 117-acre satellite facility in Lawrenceville, Georgia. The center also has 7,000 rodents in its research vivariums.
Yerkes has 350 staff members, 150 faculty scientists, 150 graduate and undergraduate students participating in research programs, and 58 postdoctoral fellows.
Yerkes is making landmark discoveries in microbiology and immunology, neuroscience, psychobiology, and sensory-motor systems. One of the center's primary goals continues to be developing an AIDS vaccine.
Other research focuses on progressive illnesses such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's, memory, drug addiction, behavioral effects of hormone replacement therapy, vision disorders, evolutionary links between biology and behavior, and interpretation of brain activity through imaging. Yerkes is the only U.S. primate center to have on-site MRI, PET, and cyclotron facilities.
Collaboration is key to Yerkes research. At the Living Links Center, scientists collaborate to study the animal roots of human social behaviors, such as cooperation, affiliation, and reconciliation. Yerkes researchers who also are members of the Center for Behavioral Neuroscience (CBN) collaborate with scientists from the CBN's consortium of eight Atlanta-based institutions in research and education.
Because of their similarity to humans in genetic makeup, behavior, and organ-system function, nonhuman primates provide irreplaceable opportunities to better understand, prevent, and treat human disease.
